C

Symposium 2 “Globalized Popular Culture and Intercultural Studies”

ommentator
A Comparative Study Might
Be Needed in East Asian
Popular Cultures
Jang In-Sung

Professor, Department of Political Science, Seoul National University

Before a departmental meeting, I had this conversation with the chairman.

and universality.
Mr. Schodt mentioned that when he saw Tezuka’s“Mr. Jang, are you doing popular culture?”works in America, he believed them to be not Japanese“No, I’m not.”works, but those of his own country.

“So why are you a commentator?”
I don’t know, either. I feel like an examinee student
right now. So while I’d like to do a good job, it doesn’tlook like I will be able to.
I have learned a lot through hearing all of your presentations about the two sides of culture, the world of
manga and anime, and the world of popular theater.
And strategy… there is a problem with strategy andphenomena, and while Mr. Morikawa seems to dislike

Actually, my family and I, long ago, were the same.
We had no idea that they were from Japan.
All of a sudden, we knew it. It happened when theJapan-Korea disputes started.
Or, maybe it was during the opening up of popularculture.
We didn’t know that it was a Japanese work.
Another thing is that I was a manga maniac when I
was in elementary school.

a nation seeing the world of manga as strategic, for me,

Every day if I had any money, I went to a book-I see public theater as seeking a road to survival using

store – if you’d call it that – and read manga instead ofsurvival strategies.

studying. What this means is that there were manga in

These two contradictory cultural worlds exist herein Japanese society.
There are many things I want to say, but as there isno time, I will present a few of the places I would liketo question, and some points on the issue.
One is the problem of the first nationality of culture

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Korea since the 1960s.
And I’ll bet they were influenced by Japanesemanga.
There were quite a few series-type manga.
In my countryside town – I’m from the countryside –there were fifteen rental book shops in this small town.

Jang In-Sung

I went around to all of them. Every day.
Well, Mr. Schodt said that manga have started toappear in Korea and China.

Secondly, I feel that it is the culture of the younger
generation.
In the case of manga and anime in Korea, JapaneseThat may sound as if there were no manga before,

manga and anime are being received quite well, but on theand that just recently Korea has started to produce

most part people move away from it as they grow older.

manga. However, this is not the case at all.

People are interested in it through junior highIt’s the same with the Korean Wave.

school, and by college there is only a small number who

All of a sudden Korean productions are being ac-are moderately interested.

cepted, but there were also Korean movies and soap operas long ago.
And suddenly they became the Korean Wave. Whythat happened, is easy. With democratization and economic development, Korea started to become visible.
So then people started to accept what there is there,
and what stories there are.

People are also taking part in “cosplay,” and I do
see it, but people drift away from it as they grow older.
I think it’s necessary to think about why this is so.
Next, when thinking about Japanese manga andanime – and I believe this continues on previous issues –and also keeping in mind the comment about manga in
Asia – first, Korea and China – it might be possible toI have wandered a bit from the topic, but “For Cul-

compare manga with that of other countries, or eventure,” whether it’s manga or anime, can be seen as one

have Comparative Manga Studies. However, there needs

aspect of Japanese culture. But it also has universality.

to be a set process for comparison.

And concerning the fact that a production of Hayao
Miyazaki’s won an Academy Award due to its distancefrom anima maniacs.

K-pop is now in fad, but what is different between
J-pop and K-pop? There is a difference.
But I also think there are similarities.

It may be my misunderstanding, but I had thought

I think that those similarities – that sympathy – isthat his winning of the Academy Award for “Spirited

there, and it is not the peculiarities but rather the univer-Away” was a valuation of his merit. I think that is whysalities that are making people receptive to it. If there

he won it.

weren’t any, then there would be a limit to its success.

When I see “Spirited Away,” I feel that it has aJapanese view of life and death, and that it has more peculiarity than it does universality.
I also have the feeling that it had a lot less popularity than his previous works.

Another, especially, is the economic problem ofmanga and anime.
In other words, how manga and anime should bethought of as cultural commodities. And what meaning
anime has as something that will pull up Japanese culture.

At any rate, it does have that universality, so there

In the case of K-pop, it is having the effect of rais-

is a limit to the degree to which we see it as having theing the image of Korea, and it is said that it also has eco-peculiarities of Japanese culture and see it as strategic.

nomic significance. But how should we see manga andJust as the receivers of media take things in as being

anime in this light? I was left with the impression that

their own, I think it is a world where people take things

this needs to be considered along with the other issues.

in not as Japanese culture but respond to them as humanThat’s all.

beings.

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